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LICE IS NOT NICE: A Head Lice Saga

Dear Faithful Readers,

It has been almost a full year since my last blog post. How this happened, I have no idea. But, as usual, I have lots of excuses. Here is what I’ve been up to for the past 11 months of not updating my blog.

Substitute teaching
Tutoring a Russian businessman (Mafioso?)
Planning exotic vacations and chickening out because of the price
Battling lice infestation
Binge Reading Warrior-Princess Trilogies
Buying a house
Moving to a new house
Doing about 5,000 loads of laundry
Cleaning up massive washing machine flood

As you can see, it’s been a busy year. Let’s start with the creepiest of these events: Lice Infestation. Admit it, you are already scratching your scalp, imagining those little buggers scurrying across your nape, laying waste to the hair follicles with tiny transparent balls of shame that you will spend hours, HOURS, gingerly picking off with your fingernails. Nightmare.

Shortly after we moved into our new house, on a bright, sunshiny morning meant for lazy, breezy hours on the beach, my daughter came into my room complaining of an itchy head. Immediately I began bargaining with God. Lord, please let it be dandruff. Or poison ivy. Or hives. Or flesh-eating bacteria, or the plague, or pretty much anything but the L word.

No such luck. As soon as I looked at her hairline, I saw the minuscule, oval-shaped Spawn of Hell dotting her scalp. Immediately gripped by the eerie sense of calm that usually descends upon me in a crisis, I silently considered my options. I should…laundry…vacuum the..everything…bag up…pillows, stuffed animals, brushes…throw away..bed linens! All of this went through my head in a split second, and I knew what I had to do.

“Mommy?” asked my daughter worriedly.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I told her comfortingly. “We just have to move out of the house for a few weeks. Either than or burn the house down and build a new one with the insurance money. And shave your head.”

Needless to say, neither she nor my husband was a fan of my ideas. While my daughter locked herself in the bathroom, sobbing, I called my husband and told him the news.

“Listen” he said sensibly. “We just bought the house. We are not moving out of it. Plus, you have to live in a house for at least a year before you can collect insurance money for a house fire.”

“Is that true?” I asked, puzzled.

“Probably not. I don’t know. But please don’t set the house on fire. After the washing machine flood, we can’t risk another insurance claim.”

“But…the laundry…” I whimpered.

He sighed impatiently. “Look, don’t go overboard on the laundry, okay? For all you know, she doesn’t even have lice. You’re probably just being paranoid.”

“Oh, she has lice.” I said indignantly, and realized that he was obviously in Stage One of Grief: Shock and Denial, while I (being highly sophisticated in my emotional responses) had advanced with lightning quickness to Stage Three: Anger and Bargaining.

“Do you not remember the Lice Outbreak of 2011?!” I gripped the phone tightly as I tried to keep from raising my voice. “Do you remember how much that SUCKED?!! We were stuck at home for weeks in front of the TV while I picked the nits out of her baby-fine hair. Do you know how many episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba I had to sit through?”

“Well, she probably didn’t have it last time either,” he said irritably.

“That’s not what her preschool said,” I told him. “Yo Gabba Gabba! I had technicolor nightmares for weeks! the green striped one..he had no shoulders..his arms came straight out of his neck…”

“I think you may have a little PTSD from that experience,” he said. “Look on the bright side- she’s too old for that show now.”

At that point I think my husband hung up. I’m not sure. I was trapped in my own personal hell. After rocking back and forth for a while, I was confronted by my daughter’s tear stained face and realized I had to pull it together for her sake.

“We are going to BE OKAY,” I announced. “Now, come here and give me a big h…high five!” I congratulated myself on my quick thinking while I smacked her palm and then quickly retreated to a safe distance. “This is a great excuse for some mother-daughter time. We are going to have some female-bonding, lice-killing fun!”

YOU TOO, can eliminate lice and spend some quality time together by following the three steps below, which I have assigned the helpful acronym “BAD.”

“BAD” (or Mommy-Daughter Fun Week!)

1. BUY: First, make the obligatory money drop at CVS: get plenty of anti-lice shampoos, conditioners, combs, sprays, hair clips, hair bands, and bandannas. Shove the resulting three-feet-long receipt of shame deep into the recesses of your purse and later, when your husband is rummaging around for the checkbook and pulls it out accusingly, you tell him that yes, it IS in fact possible to spend $168 at CVS, and did he notice the valuable coupon for $3 off Stomach-Acid Reducers Including CVS Brand, attached to that receipt? In response, he mutters something about needing those TUMS when he gets the credit card bill, at which point YOU helpfully remind him that he doesn’t even LOOk at the credit card bill because you are the one who pays it, to which he responds that you better believe he is going to START looking at it, which is your cue to lapse into a tearful gibbering tirade about neckless wavy-armed monsters. At this point he wisely retreats to the couch to watch football while you go change the sheets on all the beds for the third time, just in case.

2. APPLY: Second, apply your chosen anti-lice product to yourself and your daughter. Hide your pesticide-soaked scalps under flowered shower caps and give each other mani-pedis while listening to Taylor Swift on your phone. When your sons angrily pound on the door and demand to know why you’ve been in there for an hour, it’s time to rinse. Before you use the special metal comb to scrape those little buggers off your daughter’s scalp, you may want to take some kitchen shears and give her a cute new bob. Remember, many chic hairstyles of today are intentionally jagged or uneven, so chop away! When your sons’ protestations (“I need to use the toilet, I want waffles, the toaster’s on fire”) get truly irritating, take them to get their heads shaved at your local barber shop. This will also serve to quiet any doubts your daughter may be voicing about her own snazzy new haircut.

3. DE-LOUSE THE HOUSE: Contrary to widely held belief, you do NOT have to
launder every item in your house, only the ones that your daughter has touched in the past 3 weeks. For example, you only need to wash her bedsheets, unless, for example, your daughter regularly wanders into other family members’ beds in the middle of the night and/or makes forts out of all the blankets, pillows, and sheets in the house, in which case you are screwed. If you find the amount of laundry overwhelming, you can always put any linens, pillows, stuffed animals, toys, or other items in sealed plastic bags. After 14 days, the lice will either be dead, or your husband, having assumed that the garbage bags were full of actual garbage, will have taken the bags to the dump. Either way, problem solved! Lastly, vacuum and wipe down everything in the house, which depending on the size of your house, could take you 3 hours or several years.

NOTE: As you carefully follow these three important steps, remember to stop regularly (about every 10-15 seconds), and check your daughter’s head compulsively for nits. This is done by holding individual strands of her hair up to the light until you find one of the translucent, tiny eggs, yelling “FOUND ONE!” in triumphant disgust, removing the entire hair follicle, and placing it in bowls of bleach you have placed around the house for this purpose. The importance of doing this continuously and enthusiastically cannot be overstated.

Let’s say that you have done BAD. You congratulate yourself on your level-headed response to the crisis and put it behind you.

Weeks go by.

Then, the unthinkable happens.

It’s probably dandruff. Or a trick of the light. It couldn’t possible be…but it is.

If you would like to hear the rest of this story, leave me some positive feedback and maybe I’ll finish it next week. Or, if you’ve heard enough about lice and you are couldn’t care less about Mary Ellen Kumiega, leave me some positive feedback anyway, because I don’t take criticism well.

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kristibader

Currently residing in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Kristi is an aspiring writer and mother who spends most of her time ferrying her children to various sports practices and doctor appointments. She also substitute teaches and reads romantic fantasies by the bushel.
View all posts by kristibader

8 thoughts on “LICE IS NOT NICE: A Head Lice Saga”

This is so funny (and sad). And the scary thing is literally five minutes before reading this, I picked up a “Head Lice Notice” that one of my kids brought home from school yesterday, so my dear children had to interrupt their minecraft game for a lecture from me about how they better start coming home every single day with the SAME ponytails they go to school with (rehairstyling at school is a problem for us) and better not even think of bring home a louse. You have my absolute sympathy. Hope everything else is going well. At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor!

Lord I have missed your posts! Laugh out loud funny, although I’m sure it wasn’t funny to you at the time. In Hawaii they call them “uku”. Different word, same little nasty head bug. They spread like wildfire here because it’s HOT all the freaking time. Write more, please, so I have something funny to read. I miss you and your family. See you this summer or sooner if you plan that exotic vacation…

HEAD LICE!!! OMG!!! I didn’t ever think we’d be rid of them. I still have nightmares! We had to treat my visiting inlaws during one unlucky out- break. Not to mention the shame of calling the neighbor yet again to inform her that we were still infected or infected again. The schools used to send the kids home if they had lice. Now they send them back to class and send home a note!!! Great article, Kristi! Miss you! From: Just One Mom’s Opinion To: anneviviani85@yahoo.com Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 11:36 AM Subject: [New post] LICE IS NOT NICE: A Head Lice Saga #yiv8408422326 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv8408422326 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv8408422326 a.yiv8408422326primaryactionlink:link, #yiv8408422326 a.yiv8408422326primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv8408422326 a.yiv8408422326primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv8408422326 a.yiv8408422326primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv8408422326 WordPress.com | kristibader posted: “Dear Faithful Readers,It has been almost a full year since my last blog post. How this happened, I have no idea. But, as usual, I have lots of excuses. Here is what I’ve been up to for the past 11 months of not updating my blog.Substitute teaching” | |

So fun to get to experience your witty, hilarious, gifted prose. I always jump at the chance to read anything you write. We have had the lice threat any number of times, but have escaped so far. My “funny” story involving lice had my sister’s family of 6 visiting us while living in DC. I found out about 6 months later that about 3 days before they were to board a plane for our house, she and 3 of her girls came down with lice. She did your BAD treatment about 10 times before flying to me. Somehow I didn’t notice her searching her girls super blond locks as their hair blew in the breeze as we enjoyed all the monuments and sights of our nation’s capital. She was probably right not to tell me; I might have killed her… 🙂 Miss you!